


Perfidy

by Kinomiya



Category: Bakuten Shoot Beyblade, Beyblade
Genre: M/M, We’re in fluff town now boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26013811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinomiya/pseuds/Kinomiya
Summary: perfidy.per·fi·dy | \ ˈpər-fə-dē  \1. the quality or state of being faithless or disloyal : TREACHERY.2. an act or an instance of disloyalty.
Relationships: Kon Rei | Ray Kon/Mizuhara Max | Max Tate
Kudos: 4





	Perfidy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misdre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misdre/gifts).



> I made a promise a long time ago to write you something and it was tonight, years later, at 1am that the idea came into my head. 
> 
> I AM SO OUT OF PRACTISE AND I AM SORRY.

* * *

You know, there’s been times I wish I hadn’t walked out on that night.

As I sat in that room with all the chatter and buzz around me, I was completely and utterly overwhelmed with a feeling I had never experienced before, like an animal trapped in a cage, there for everyone to view and admire. This was my life now, I would marry the head of the village's daughter, I would take over the responsibilities of the village, I’d have a couple kids. I’d be happy, and untouchable… and completely trapped.

Trapped, yeah, that was the feeling. This must have been the feelings of desperation and anxiety that Takao would sometimes talk about in late night group chats and text messages when he was feeling completely ambivalent to the future his father expected of him. The feelings Kyoujyu would talk frantically about after a particularly difficult test. That Kai would occasionally drop a couple words of… encouragement and tell everyone to stop being babies and grow up already… but more importantly the ones you would always be there to make disappear in an instant.

The only problem is you weren’t there.

The village wasn’t terribly keen on outsiders, they never had been, we were our own little secluded paradise, hidden away from all the troubles outsiders and their frivolities bring. Hell I’d only been allowed to have some of those outsider frivolities because I’d taken work in Beijing and sending postage when they needed my presence was as ludicrous as it sounds. But the problem with nomadic groups of people is they especially don’t want outsiders seeing their customs. All the friends I’d made outside over the years were simply not permitted to witness such a sacred ceremony as the union between Mao and I, and especially not the transfer of the chieftain title to me. It was tired, old and completely predictable, and I was alone.

At some point, during all the last minute preparations, all the lectures and reminders on what to do, how to act, how important this was that overwhelming fear completely took over me. When I had left as a child it was to explore the world, it was to know the outside before I was tied down forever, locked up like a tiger at a circus. There was never any goal, or aim of my wandering, I just wanted to see everything, and learn more. But when I slipped away that night it was with complete and utter clarity of what I wanted, of where I wanted to be. As lights faded away into pitch black forest, there wasn’t even a consideration in my mind that I would return one day.

It took me nearly two weeks to get from Beijing to Sendai. Hitchhiking, walking for kilometers, working on various boats as a trade for free travel. I didn’t have a penny to my name, the only thing I had was a vague sense of direction to get to a dojo in Japan to find the person who’d always help a person in need. I must have looked like a vagrant when he opened the door in the middle of the night with an eyebrow raised and a quizzical look, not saying, but thinking: “Didn’t you just get married, Rei?” Oh but how do you explain to someone that that is a story for another time? I must have come off particularly callous in my reply to him. It’s a good thing he’s accustomed to such brashness because he was able to completely shrug it off. 

I don’t know how long I kicked around that place. I was free and so completely terrified of that freedom I was frozen in place. I planned to make my way to America, to get everything off my chest but in all my days and days playing out every possible scenario in my head someone else made the move for me. I was sitting at the koi pond after dark when I heard your voice for the first time in… months.

“Rei?” You were standing there in your orange jumper with a curious look on your face.

“Max.” I said as evenly as I could manage with all the chaos in my mind. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh… Takao called me a couple days ago and said you just sort of showed up looking like an escaped animal, so I decided I’d come back to Japan a couple weeks early.” You spoke with a sheepish smile on your face as you scratched the back of your head… nervously?

“Early?” I inquired casually, standing up and brushing my pants off.

“Yeah, American colleges get out for the summer in May, Takao and Kyoujyu aren’t finished until July so I usually stay in America for the first half of the break.” You laughed a little before adding: “You know, it’d be boring being alone all day.” 

“I don’t know much about all that.” I admitted, it wasn’t that I hadn’t been interested in going to university, but the elders had very passionately been against the idea, I’d never thought much of it, but now it almost seemed like a wasted opportunity, all my friends were pursuing more education, careers… and I was going to simply be the leader of a remote village hidden away in the forests of China.

“Oh! It’s not important… so what brings you to Japan, I thought…” You trailed off but I know what was on your mind, I was getting married, wasn’t I? It was the same question Takao had wanted an answer to the day I had shown up here, it was the question everyone who knew I was here wanted an answer to, an answer that was complicated and I didn’t fully have myself.

“It didn’t happen, something came up.” You looked so completely bewildered at the answer you didn’t have a reply and we fell into silence just starting at each other across the yard.

I wasn’t ready to confront the questions in my mind and unresolved feelings rattling around in my bones and yet here I was standing in front of the object that all those complicated things stemmed from. Why had I run away from my wedding? What could possibly evoke such a powerful feeling inside me that I would betray my family in such an irreparable way? Was it really for the one person who could always settle down the raging storm of anxiety inside me with just a few words, was that it? Was I about to walk away from every part of my entire life for this one thing unconcerned about the consequences?

“Max…” I started to speak but didn’t know how to continue, I didn’t have any train of thought, part of me hoped he didn’t hear me speak so I could drop it and retreat away from the flames I was getting awfully close to touching.

“Huh yeah?” He replied quickly, snapping out of what looked like deep thoughts of his own. Well I guess I should have expected he wouldn’t miss my words in the silence outside.

“I have a few things… to say” I whispered my throat suddenly getting dry, realizing I was treading into dangerous territory there was no going back from.

“Yeah? Like what?” He moved, closing the gap between us so we were no more a meter from one another.

“I didn’t marry Mao… I couldn’t marry her, there was something else on my mind, well someone else” It was much easier to make that admission than I ever imagined.

“Oh, who? Is she cute?” He cocked his head to the side curiously. I couldn’t tell if this was genuine naïveté or not, but it made me chuckle a little.

“Well that’s the problem.” I muttered as I approached him, closing the small gap he’d left between us. “It’s not a woman.”

There was a moment of puzzlement in his eyes before it seemed to dawn on him what I was suggesting with those words, in the short time it took to close the gap he seemed to move synchronously until our foreheads were touching and his fingers tangled with my own, a ghost of a smile playing across his lips.

“Let me ask again then, is he cute?” There was a glint of mischief in those eyes now, I couldn’t help but snort at the sudden change in demeanor.

“Not at all.” I said teasingly, before hearing him let out a cry in indignation and shoving me away. I pulled him with me, trying not to lose my footing as we stumbled backwards.

“Well that’s too bad, ugly or not you might be stuck with him now.” The reply was giddy, he was so full of life that seemed to be completely lacking in the walls of that small remote village. 

“Stuck with him huh? What’s he going to do? Kidnap me and lock me in his basement?” I retorted playfully and got a laugh as a reply.

“Don’t give me any ideas, Rei.” He said with a glint in his eyes as he pulled me closer, our lips meeting in a very chaste kiss. 

For a long time, as long as I could remember, I’d been sitting on these inexplicable feelings that rattled around inside me. Every time we’d interact those feelings would bubble to the surface and I had no idea what to do with myself, or with them. I didn’t understand what they meant. It wasn’t until I went home, and stewed in the loss of your presence that it started to eat away at me a little bit at a time. When I sat there that night, moments away from marrying her and sealing my fate to become the leader of that small village, an overwhelming anxiety boiled over, I had never wanted to return here, I had never wanted to take on all these responsibilities, and I didn’t want her as much as I may have told myself that I did. Part of me had always known that the place I wanted to be most of all, was at your side, no matter if you felt the same or not.

So I take it back, I don’t regret running away that night, not even a little.

  
  


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